


without losing a piece of me

by doctortwelfth



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bisexual Peter Parker, Coming Out, Fluff and Humor, Gen, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Themes, irondad feels only in my house, no spoilers for endgame!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 22:37:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18838177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctortwelfth/pseuds/doctortwelfth
Summary: The facts of the situation are this: Peter Parker is bisexual. He has not said a single word about it to anyone, and the thought of coming out to Tony like he’d planned to makes the words die in his throat. Not the most promising situation, really.





	without losing a piece of me

**Author's Note:**

> absolute indulgent fluff, mostly me projecting onto peter and screeching. i have no excuses for this sfgljsflh
> 
> now with a [russian translation](https://ficbook.net/readfic/8244727) by Anastasia Adamova!

Peter doesn’t mean to make it into a big thing. It’s not like he’s had a particularly hard time coming to terms with it himself, and he’s not ashamed in the slightest. It’s not even that he thinks Tony will react badly, because Tony can be an asshole sometimes, yeah, but he’s a good person at heart. At any rate, he’s certainly not a bigot.

So why is it so hard to—ugh. God.  _ God.  _ He’d just wanted to drop in it casually in conversation or something, like it was no big deal. It really wasn’t! But then his stupid brain had frozen up at the thought of actually coming out to a real living person and his hands had starting shaking and he hadn’t done it. Peter grimaces at the ceiling and idly flexes a wrist.  _ Thwip.  _ His newly upgraded web shooter responds like a charm, web fluid latching onto the cream-colored drywall above him. 

Tony had asked for a prototype of the shooters to tinker with over the weekend and handed them back to him like that, waving off Peter’s protests. He only replaced a few parts to shave down the reaction time, he’d said.  _ You did a good job on these, kid, a really good job. _ That was the last thing Tony had told him before taking off back to Manhattan. At least Peter has the knowledge that Tony is proud of him—was proud of him—even if it was for a little thing like that, to fall back on if this goes wrong. He yanks back the webbing on the ceiling viciously.

Okay, well, so maybe Peter is a little bit ashamed. But not in any sort of capacity that’s detrimental to his life and general sense of self-worth. Just ashamed enough to stay firmly planted in this closet, not claustrophobic in it but scared out of his wits at the thought of cracking it open. 

Yikes. That metaphor got away from him really fast, and also became way more personal than he’s ready to actually deal with. That’s fine. That’s okay. He just needs to calm down and not make things more complicated than they have to be. 

The facts of the situation are this: Peter Parker is bisexual. He has not said a single word about it to anyone, and the thought of coming out to Tony like he’d planned to makes the words die in his throat. Not the most promising situation, really. 

_ I’m bisexual _ , he thinks in the comfort of his own mind; nothing happens. Of course it doesn’t. It shouldn’t, because he’s suspected this since he was thirteen and known for sure by fourteen and thought about it in those exact words enough times that he’s pretty much come to accept his sexuality with everything it entails. In an ideal world, Peter Parker honestly feels that he would be the first to step up and say that he likes boys (and girls, and people are neither or both, because those parts are very important to him too), but this isn’t an ideal world. It’s the real world, and he is scared to death of the scrutiny and stereotypes and prejudice that are sure to follow. Peter isn’t naive enough to think there won’t be consequences to coming out, because of course not everyone is going to have the same blasé reaction that he did. 

_ I’m bisexual,  _ he thinks again, repeating it like a mantra. This is ridiculous. He’s Spider-Man. He fights crime on a regular basis. But then he thinks about actually saying it out loud, putting those words into the air and exposing them to all the consequences the real world can throw at him, and something in him recoils instinctively. 

He can’t. There’s self-acceptance, and then there’s coming out, which he’s beginning to learn are two very different things. He won’t tell Tony, or anyone else, for now. The decision sends a wave of relief through him, but there’s a small part amidst it all that’s pooling with bitterness—is he going to have to hide for the rest of his life, then? Is he just going to keep running?

* * *

The next day is a Friday, so Peter goes to Tony’s workshop after school with the intention of making a few tweaks to the web fluid.

They’re working at opposite ends of the same table; Peter squinting at a new-and-improved version of the web fluid formula and scribbling hypotheses in a notebook, Tony supposedly testing out some computer code but mostly just making very deliberate scoffing noises at Peter using paper in the midst of—

“—the most technologically advanced space in all of New York, probably the entire United States and also the world, but you’re still choosing to kill trees, huh?”

“Leave me alone, Mr. Stark, you’re just mad because nobody can actually read your handwriting and that’s why you hate paper,” Peter tells him without looking up from his page. If he can just find a way to compensate for the addition of carbon tetrachloride without reducing the integrity of the structure itself… 

His train of thought is halted by a crackle of static from the loudspeakers embedded in the ceiling. Tony curses under his breath and swipes a few times at the slide he’s working on. Music blasts out into the room. 

“FRI, run diagnostics on speaker B-Primary, what’s up with that static at the beginning?” Tony yawns. “Text me a, I don’t know, a reminder or something about it later.” FRIDAY murmurs a quiet affirmative, and Tony looks up and snaps his fingers. “Parker. Spiderling. Spidey-kid. Do you want any songs?”

Peter shakes his head, so Tony shrugs. “You’re getting my Bowie playlist then. I’m in a Bowie kind of mood today.” At his voice command, the music changes into something low and with a bassline that thrums through the room. 

“David Bowie?” And Peter promptly ruins it all because he’s kind of tired and has no filter. “Wasn’t he bisexual?” 

Good job, Parker. Not even a full day after you decided that you would leave this topic alone for a while.

“Mhmm.” Tony makes a vague sound of agreement. “Press gave him so much shit over it, too.”

He could have stopped there, just stopped talking and let Tony ramble into some other, safer topic of conversation about how people in the media industry are all pigs, but his traitorous brain has to blurt out something else. 

“And you’re—um, you’re okay with that?” Then the one remaining part of his mind that isn’t completely self-sabotaging kicks in, actually processes what he just said. Fuck. “Wait, not like  _ that _ , I didn’t mean for it to sound homophobic—well, biphobic? I just, I mean—never mind, never mind, pretend I didn’t say anything.”

This time Tony actually looks up, and his face looks marginally more serious now. “Peter. What?” He cuts off Peter’s second feeble attempt at explaining. “Pete, I know you’re not a bigot or a homophobe, you don’t need to convince me of that. So what’re you really trying to say here?”

Peter ducks his head, looking at the chemical formulas in front of him. The blood is pounding in his ears. “Nothing,” he says, his voice wobbling. He knows he sounds all wrong, scared and with something to hide. He doesn’t know how to fix it. “I’m sorry, just. Literally just pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“Oh, kid.  _ Kid _ .” In a flash, Tony is hurrying around the table, crouching down in front of Peter to meet him at eye level, and oh, God, now it  _ is  _ going to be a whole big thing. 

He puts a hand under Peter’s chin and uses it to gently lift his face. Peter sees the expression on the man’s face and knows that he  _ knows _ . Or at least can guess, from everything that’s happened in the last few minutes. Tony Stark is a logician first and foremost; he can put together the pieces. He opens his mouth to explain, do something, anything, but Tony shakes his head. “Shush. It's fine. You don’t have to say anything at all, Peter. Not until you’re okay with it.”

Peter just stares. The words are right there, and he doesn’t know what to do. The absolute panic must show on his face because Tony pats his cheek a little clumsily and smiles, a tiny quirk of a thing. “Here, I’ll let you on one of my secrets,” he says. “I’m bisexual too. Like David Bowie.”

Peter’s breath stutters. “Oh.  _ Oh. _ ” He tries to keep his outward expression carefully schooled, but something inside him leaps. Tony— _ Tony  _ is bisexual too. Peter hadn’t known, would never have guessed in a million years; he’d said it was a secret of his, so that means… he knew what it was like. Maybe he’d struggled with it, too, that self-drawn line which made it so hard for the words to actually come out (ha) of his mouth. And even if it had been different for Tony, because yeah, Peter gets that experiences aren’t universal, it doesn’t change the fact that, wow. Tony Stark is bisexual. His brain keeps getting stuck somewhere around the first or second word. There’s no way this is happening.

“Yeah, kid.” Tony rises up and ruffles his hair in a familiar movement. “Take your time. You’ll figure it out, and it doesn’t matter if you want to say it out loud tomorrow or next year or never.” He pauses for a moment. “I’m proud of you, you know that, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Mr. Stark, you do keep saying that.” He’s still a little dazed, trying to find an appropriate reaction that doesn’t immediately out him. 

“I’m serious, Peter. Nothing is ever going to change that. I’m sorry if I ever did or said anything to imply that it would.” Tony uses the hand in Peter’s hair to pull him into a sort awkward half-hug. Peter’s face is mashed sideways into his stupid science pun t-shirt, polyester against his cheek, and he kind of feels like crying. 

_ Oh no, love, you’re not alone. Just turn on with me, and you’re not alone.  _ David Bowie’s voice croons into the workshop, accompanied by a crash of instrumentals. He wraps his arms around Tony’s middle and holds on. 

* * *

Later, they order takeout and eat it sprawled out over Tony’s obscenely large living room sofa. Peter is the one who brings it up again, this time deliberately. He doesn’t want to draw attention to it, but at the same time he feels a little bit guilty, and yes, he can admit, unbearably curious. “You didn’t have to do that for me, Mr. Stark.”

Tony pauses from where he’s going through his second pint of cherry ice cream at a frankly alarming rate. “Do what? Buy takeout and then let you raid my ice cream freezer to steal the limited edition dark chocolate flavor?” He points a spoon accusingly at Peter. A drop of pink ice cream drips off the end onto the couch. “I didn’t have to, but I did anyway. Be grateful, Spider-brat.”

Peter rolls his eyes, wolfing down more noodles and then immediately following it with another mouthful of said limited edition dark chocolate ice cream. Tony makes a face, which he responds to with a rude gesture. (They’d had this conversation before. “Peter, that’s objectively disgusting. You’re not supposed to eat dessert and food  _ together _ ,” Tony would say, and then Peter would loudly complain about how pineapples on pizza were also objectively disgusting and counted as dessert with food but obviously that was okay, Mr. Tony-selective-blindness Stark? They’re both such assholes.)

“No, it’s obviously my God-given right to leech off your money. Overthrow the one percent and all that.” Peter swallows. He’s stalling. “I meant the whole… coming out thing. You didn’t need to come out to make me feel more comfortable, or, I don’t know, prove that you’re cool with it. I get that it’s a personal thing, so, uh. I feel bad for making you do it on my terms?” The last bit pitches upwards into more of a question than a statement.

Tony doesn’t say anything for a while, long enough that the first vestiges of panic start stirring in Peter’s mind.  _ Abort, abort.  _ Had he hit a nerve? Was it something Mr. Stark didn’t like to talk about? What if mentioning it twice was one too many times? Fuck. Fuck—

“I didn’t come out because I felt obligated to,” Tony says with a small laugh. “Really, Parker. You can relax.” His expression turns thoughtful. “It is personal, I understand, but it’s not too much of a secret anyway. Most of the Avengers know, and so do Pepper and Happy. And now you.”

“Why me, though?” Peter tries to crane his head to look at him, but this time it’s Tony who seems almost uncharacteristically shy, flicking his eyes to the far wall behind Peter and keeping them there.

“Sexuality is hard. It’s complicated and weird and sometimes the thought of coming out makes you so scared that you can’t think rationally about anything at all. 

“Listen, kid. I knew Pepper made regular donations to places like The Trevor Project and she’d never been anything but respectful about gay rights, but when I made up my mind to come out to her, I spent the entire day avoiding her instead. I thought she might break up with me over that.” He laughs, posture relaxing into a slump. “She didn’t blink an eye. She took it so well, bless that woman. Well, except she told me later she thought  _ I _ was going to break up with her and that’s why I was acting so suspicious all day, but that’s not relevant now.”

Peter nods mutely, remembers his internal monologue where he’d managed to convince himself of how badly Tony would react to  _ his _ hypothetical coming out despite all evidence to the contrary. “Yeah,” he manages to rasp out. His next bite of noodles goes down a little bit easier.

“I just wanted you to know that you have someone in your corner,” Tony says softly. “Maybe make it a little bit less daunting for when you actually decide to go through with it. God knows I would have wanted someone to do that for me when I was younger.” He tips his head back with a sigh. Peter’s heart breaks a little for him; Tony, who has been so kind, so understanding, about all of Peter’s mumbled half-truths, but has had no one extend him the same courtesy. 

“Also, you’re important to me. I’ve been pretty discreet about it in public, but important people in my life know these things.” And then Tony goes back to his ice cream like he hasn’t just said exactly the right things to Peter, like this hasn’t been the most important conversation Peter has been part of in a long time.

_ Thank you _ , Peter thinks fiercely, desperately. There’s no other way to say it that could be as meaningful as what Tony’s done for him.

* * *

Two months later, summer is peeking over the horizon and school is almost out. Peter’s sitting on a rooftop, watching the sun set into the Queens skyline.

There’s a breeze behind him. The hairs on the back of his neck rise, and he already knows who it is before he hears the clang of metal on concrete. 

“Hey, kid,” Tony says, stepping out of the suit. It folds up into a briefcase that he puts on the ground before coming forward to sit next to Peter. “You’re not out Spider-Manning today?”

Peter shrugs. “Later in the night, probably. Don’t tell May, though, she’ll be worried if she knows I’m sitting on roofs without the suit on.”

“I mean, as long as you don’t fall off or anything, I don’t see the harm.” Tony squints at him. “On that note, do not under any circumstances fall off the roof, Parker. With or without the suit. I’ll never hear the end of it from your aunt.”

“Shut  _ up _ , Mr. Stark!” Peter pushes at him, and the ensuing scuffle is raucous in the quiet high above the city streets. 

“Tony,” he says once they’ve settled down a bit. They’re back to sitting side by side again, but he can see Tony’s profile from the corner of his eye if he tries hard enough. He didn’t plan on doing this today, but he knows it’ll be okay. His hands are still shaking a little, so he folds them under his thighs.

“Peter,” Tony parrots back, teasing. 

“I’m bi. I mean, bisexual.”

A second passes. “That’s fine, kid. So am I. Thanks for trusting me with that.”

“I might lean more towards girls, though. I don’t really know yet.” Peter breathes in, breathes out. The world is still turning. In the distance, the sun is sinking below the horizon, all crimson and pink. Tony looks at him with a soft, fond expression on his face.

“Well, I'm a solid three on the Kinsey scale. Equal opportunities for everyone. Nobody is safe from me.”

Peter makes a face. “I don’t want to hear about your string of past lovers, yikes. But have you considered: girls are so pretty.”

“Yeah, okay, but,” Tony says, lifting a finger. “Boys are also really pretty.”

“You make a surprisingly good case.” Peter groans. “They’re all so attractive and I feel doubly attacked all the time because I’m attracted to two genders. Multiple genders. Whatever. How is this fair?”

Tony laughs at him, the bastard. Just because he’s engaged and off the market doesn’t mean he gets to laugh at Peter’s absolute state of crisis right now. “Also, I hope you understand that now that you’ve formally come out to me, I am legally allowed to tease you about  _ anyone _ who so much as looks your way. That means  _ both _ of your friends.  _ All  _ of your friends, even.”

“Please, please, never have children, Mr. Stark.”

“Who needs another child when they already have one? You’re a full time job, Peter,” Tony tells him. 

Peter laughs louder at that than the situation really warrants, laughs until his breath runs out. He’s not free, exactly, because that happened a while ago. But it does feel like something’s been lifted off his chest. The closet isn’t exactly as claustrophobic as it was all those weeks ago; he hadn’t realized how suffocating the inside was.

Something warm is spreading through his chest, expanding and expanding. Turns out it wasn’t a big deal after all. Sometimes small things can be meaningful too. 

It’s going to be okay, Peter thinks. It’s going to be okay. 

**Author's Note:**

> wow i've been absent for a while! seeing endgame inspired me to write for marvel again, and hopefully i'll put some more works up in the future because i've missed this fandom. i wrote this fic pretty quickly but it's pretty near and dear to my heart because peter's internal monologue was also a lot like what i was thinking in the months before i came out as bi to my close friends. i don't often see that brand of internalized homophobia/struggle reflected in media, so i wanted to reflect that in my fic! unfortunately i did not have a tony stark to support me like that, but my friends reacted very well and one year later, i'm much more open + happier with that aspect of my self than i ever thought was possible. 
> 
> the david bowie song peter hears is rock n roll suicide, which as a whole doesn't have much to do with the themes of this fic, but it's one of my favorite songs so give it a shot anyway!
> 
> if you're reading this and closeted, know it that will get better. even when it seems like it won't. i swear. also keep in mind that coming out isn't necessarily the goal for everyone; it's perfectly alright to not come out, or only to certain people! stay safe, everyone <3


End file.
